the short life of a sharp knife
by SalixMendax
Summary: The reminiscing of a man with no room to throw stones in a greenhouse. (You know that broken glass can cut better than knives.) Nothing romantic or family or fluffy, sorry. See inside for warnings.


_**AN: As implied from the title (taken from the lyrics of 'If I die young' which I thought was by Sinead O'Conner but the internet says otherwise) this is not a nice, fluffy story. It contains mentions a suicidal/self-destructive behaviour, child abuse/neglect/mistreatment, negative emotions and mildly incoherent rambling. In all honesty, this one-shot was mostly experimental, in both style and perspective. I have played with a similar format since but that lot is mostly lingering unfinished.**_

_**Hope you enjoy, Sal xx**_

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When you first see Harry at the Welcoming Feast you think of James Potter. The hair, the cheeks, the nose and jaw: they could be doubles apart from the eyes

_(They're her eyes, Lily's eyes, and it burns to look at them.)_

He's already gotten his own Sirius Black, the youngest Weasley sticking to his side like glue. Weasley's even a pureblood, tearing himself apart as he pulls away from his family's distasteful image while trying to live up to their high expectations.

They're inseparable and insufferable.

The next morning you find they have their own you in Draco Malfoy. Your circumstances were not the same as his and he comes picking fights in a way you never could, but you ignore the differences.

_(Those differences should have been your first clue.)_

It's Halloween when they get their own Remus. Admittedly she's female and not a werewolf, but you've seen the way she devours books, always desperate to prove herself in class, prove she has a right to be here. You see the way she lies to cover for the boys who saved her from the mountain troll. She's not a good liar but neither was Lupin in the beginning.

The similarities grow.

_(The differences are easier to ignore.)_

Potter makes the Quidditch team. The three of them sneak around and get caught out of bounds.

They never find their own Pettigrew.

It's Christmas and Potter and Weasley are staying. You barely see them except at meals. At first Potter is relaxed and excited. The day itself comes and he looks so happy he's almost overwhelmed. Then the days after and he looks so wistful and desperate.

_(Cracked and empty.)_

Albus comes to you later to discuss Potter.

_(Because who else would he trust but the man he owns?)_

He seemingly fails to grasp the concept of privacy and secrets that aren't yours to share. Albus tells you he gave Potter an invisibility cloak and lured him to the Mirror of Erised. He tells you what Potter saw, and you hate him so much because he got to see her again and you know he doesn't understand what a gift that is.

_(But you look into her eyes in his face and you wonder…)_

Then the end of year comes, and you listen as Albus tells you what Potter told him: three headed dogs, flying keys, giant chess sets and poison and _**Him. **_It's bravery so stupid it's suicidal.

_(That was never James Potter's brand of Gryffindor foolishness.)_

It's something you refuse to think about even as you see his shoulders tense as the Closing Feast comes to an end. You don't acknowledge the desperation as Potter pushes his address into his friend's hands and begs them to write.

James Potter always knew with certainty that his friends would write over the summer.

_(You try not to think you got the casting wrong in your head.)_

Next time you see him, he's just done something stupid, driven a flying car to Hogwarts with his best mate in tow. It's enough to convince you that you weren't wrong about Potter taking after his father.

Then the Chamber of Secrets is opened and the fools you teach blame Potter.

James would have turned it into a joke or loudly declared his innocence or started a fight with anyone who said something to his face. Harry just bows his head and keeps going.

_(The way he lets the words wash over him is too practised for him to have never swallowed some similar sentiments before. You don't teach yourself to swim without nearly drowning.)_

Then it's time for some of Potter's life-threatening idiocy: going down to the Chamber of Secrets and fighting a basilisk alone. It infuriates you because you never made that promise for him to throw it all away.

_(But there's something about the set of his jaw that reminds you of another Marauder.)_

Lupin should never have accepted Albus' job offer, you think as you fall into an uneasy alliance. It's making him look at Harry, to compare him to his parents. You know he's coming up short.

_(He does when you try.)_

You've realised by now you were wrong about Potter and Weasley. Potter isn't his father's son and Weasley was never Black. You were right about Granger; she is still irrevocably Lupin.

But Weasley can connect to Harry in a way Granger can't. It reminds you of how Potter Senior could Black to respond to him in a way Lupin never could.

Weasley reins Potter in and stop him dwelling on things that would smother him, like the threat from an escaped convict and the chill of the Dementors. He uses Quidditch and fun and other silly games. It works but you would bet he _(they)_ has no idea what he's doing, how much influence it gives him.

Granger understands Potter in a way that Weasley can't. She, like Lupin, knows the pain of feeling alone in a crowd, of not fighting back because spite isn't worth it if it makes you hurt more, of blood not always meaning there, here. She understands it, like Lupin does, but they don't feel it like Harry, like Sirius.

_(Like you.)_

Weasley and Potter Senior, with their supportive, doting families, their easy friendships and bloody pride, can never understand.

Black escapes and it galls you to see the hope in Potter's eyes.

_(And how crushed he looks as he returns to his family for the summer.)_

The next year is stressful with the Tournament and Moody and you almost wish for the werewolf back. You wonder if a part of Lupin is grateful you got him fired when you see the words washing over Harry again, his head bowed against the current but his spine straighter than it ever was before. You see he's learnt that standing with someone makes you vulnerable.

He still takes Weasley back, the fool.

_(Or maybe he's realised that no matter how much they hurt you, it hurts more to be alone.)_

You barely hear the crack of the portkey over the burning in your arm. Harry has appeared in front of the crowd, pale, shaking and terrified. He's clutching Diggory's dead body like it's a lifeline. Voldemort is back and everything is about to change.

_(It doesn't, or at least not as much as you would like.) _

The Order of the Phoenix reforms and Dumbledore tells it's concerned members Harry will cope with this new threat just as well as he always has.

_(You're not the only one this doesn't reassure.)_

Umbridge thinks she brings him close to breaking point, and she does in a way. If Potter had snapped in the way he was headed as she goaded him, it would have ended with someone jumping off the Astronomy Tower.

_(You don't think it would have been Harry.)_

Then Black is dead, and you don't feel as cheerful about it as you should.

Harry has a strange expression on his face that you don't recognise. It's cold, calculating and a little desperate.

He still smiles well enough to fool his friends.

_(You really should recognise it. You remember your mother's funeral, your father's. It's on the tip of your tongue.)_

You always wondered if Black was lying when he said he wasn't trying to kill you. You wonder again as you piece together Draco Malfoy in a girl's bathroom. Harry has the same pale, blank expression on his face as Sirius did as they claim they didn't know the consequences of their actions. They're both in sixth year, you note.

_(The similarities between Lily's son and a dead man have never been so striking.)_

Later, the next day, you sit with Lupin with two glasses of cheap rum on the table. The Order meeting's over and it's just you left now. You never thought you'd be here, especially not with him.

"Harry stopped us from killing Pettigrew that night," Lupin says, not looking away from the fire, his face lined from moonlight, "It reminded me so much of James." He turns his head slightly, meeting your eyes for the first time in over ten years. "Does he always remind you that much of James?"

You sweep up your glass and throw it back _(because, dammit, that's not a question you want to answer) _and you shake your head.

"He reminds me of Black," you say and silent tears run down Lupin's face because he knows what made Black the way he was, the sheer magnitude of emotional neglect and unreachable expectations, and you know neither of you stopped it from happening to Harry.

_(By the time you got to him it was too late so what was the point?)_

A year later and so much has changed. You lie dying by the hand of the man you never truly served, and you want to cry at the irony. This is the place where you almost died for the first time and it seems so fitting to be with the boy – the man – who reminds you so much of the one who sent you here for the first time.

_(Part of you hopes he never finds his own Azkaban, his own green-eyed guilt, but you know he will. Men like Sirius Black, like Harry Potter, like you, will always find some prison they think they deserve. It's how they were taught to be.)_

You look back with the clarity of death and wonder how two men so similar could get along when you couldn't get along with either.

_(It doesn't seem fair.)_

But he's looking down at you with the same expression he had on his face when his godfather died and you wonder, what did you do to earn it?

Then you realise it's not grief or loss; it's selfish envy that tastes so strong not even the sweetness of longing can cover its foul, bitter flavour.

So, you give him the only thing you have left to give him, an excuse.

_(You give him hope.)_

You give him the memories of Albus telling you Harry had to die, of when you envied Potter for something that wasn't his mother's eyes. If there's one thing people like Harry Potter and Sirius Black and you won't do, it's die because you want to.

You'll never admit it as you throw yourself into situations where death is the more likely ending, as you bury your envy at a funeral, as you pretend that life is worth living.

_(You work so hard to make it so it isn't.)_

It doesn't mean that life's not addicting.

_(You fought too long, too hard to survive in this world. You don't deserve to give yourself death.)_

But you're dying now, not by your own hand. You don't have to fight anymore because you've made your token effort. You stopped wanting to live but you always thought you deserved it too much to die. It's out of your hands now. You've done all you can.

You see her green-eyes as you fade away and hope – oh, how you hope! – that there isn't a next great adventure.

_(You don't think you can face that green-eye guilt again...)_

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**Harry Potter grew up to be the youngest Head Auror in half a century. The Daily Prophet article mentioning his promotion focused more on how handsome he looked in his red work robes, while the Quibbler did an excellent piece on his quest to clear the Department of Blibbering Humdingers. **

_**(But no one ever knew how much he wished he was still working in the field.)**_

**Harry married his childhood sweetheart, Ginny Weasley, and they had three beautiful children together. The memories of her red hair shining against her white wedding dress and the rosy cheeks of his three progenies, as he told anyone who would listen, were enough to power one thousand patroni. **

_**(But no one ever knew it was never enough to power his patronus.)**_

**Harry died young, only 39. It was a life filled with accolades for bravery in the line of duty and for his charity work raising money for St Mungo's hospital. **

_**(It was a life constrained by his red-stained, self-made chains.)**_

**He died on an ordinary Tuesday, run over by a bus as he stopped it from hitting a stranger's daughter. Harry was a great man, they said at his funeral, gone before his time.**

_**(And he closed his eyes, relieved, hoping that there wasn't a next great adventure. He didn't think he could face another life of living up to society's expectations.)**_

_**...**_

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